Bloodsport

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Mar 192012
 

It seems I haven’t been the only one to notice Shimano’s steadily accumulating arsenal of game-changing patents lately. Matt Wiebe’s new article in Bicycle Retailer draws attention to the industry behemoth’s patent portfolio, which dwarfs the competition. Wiebe writes that Shimano “is moving into areas of development—dirt suspension, hydraulic rim brakes, dropper seatposts and electric integration—that could shake up the market if the technology makes it into production.” Absolutely. And you don’t build an empire on your production capabilities by applying for patents for stuff you never intend to make. By all indications, Shimano is about to deliver their second major industry shakeup, and things are about to get rough for SRAM.

Or maybe not.

Much is constantly made of the relationship between component manufacturers and bike companies. The Bicycle Retailer article rightly points out the market share SRAM had been gaining in bundling suspension and components for OE spec on bikes, and the conspicuous silence from Shimano regarding this. “A survey of suspension engineers, who declined to go on record, said Shimano has the technology to make competitive forks,” writes Wiebe, “but none thought the company was setting up to enter the market. At the same time, however, they wonder how long Shimano can stand on the sidelines as SRAM’s RockShox suspension line enables it to offer product managers seductive pricing on component and suspension packages.”

The article goes on to point out that Shimano’s continuing absence from the suspension market continues to offer “a lifeline for Fox, Manitou, Marzocchi, SR Suntour and others,” which is true, except that one of those brands is clearly not like the others. Shimano doesn’t share patents with Marzocchi, Manitou or any also-ran suspension companies the way they do with Fox. The recent high-profile move of the Santa Cruz Syndicate team from SRAM to “Shimano and Fox,” combined with some pretty clear writing on the patent walls makes one thing pretty clear.

Shimano is going to buy Fox.

That is, if they even need to. Plenty of business mechanics to compute there, and clearly both companies are already benefiting from a very close partnership that might not require actually tying the corporate knot, but the writing is clearly on the wall.

Manitou and Marzocchi? Yes, they’re doomed. What’s left of them, at least. But SRAM? I don’t think so.

Continued and even strengthening relationships between Fox and Shimano will certainly not be good for SRAM, but SRAM has what it takes to survive the assault, and stands to benefit from the attrition that’d take place in the suspension market. Already borderline non-existent in the OE market, Manitou and Marzocchi’s potential total extinction stands to benefit SRAM’s RockShox division, a company with a far wider assortment of suspension products across a wide price range–much wider than Fox. A full assault by the combined Shimano and Fox forces would make what’s been happening over the past decade offical: nobody would be left but SRAM.

And somehow, White Brothers. Have to hand it to those scrappy little guys.

SRAM’s suspension products still need both brand work and innovation before they can truly rival the industry reputation and near rear suspension monopoly that is Fox, but SRAM has made tremendous headway in paying attention to the end user. When Shimano notoriously “integrated” your shifting and braking on mountain bikes, SRAM very specifically did not. SRAM has also led the way in 2×10 mountain drivetrains, a “by the people, for the people” kind of revolution. In both cases, SRAM’s marketing did an outstanding job of delivering the message: “We know what you want, and we’re building it for you.” They used Shimano’s enormous weight against them, getting the big guys off balance in the eyes of the public. Behind the scenes, this was a blip on Shimano’s bottom line, but SRAM set up shop inside that market inflection point and carved out a huge name for themselves.

It’s going to come down to electronics. If Di2 is any indication, Shimano may have already won the war, but it’s also possible that we’ll see a backlash to electronics among riders out there. SRAM has already drawn a line in the sand when it comes to road groups. Want to save a pound and a half? You know where find us. Adoption of electronics on mountain bikes could be more complicated–especially if Shimano plans to have a battery operating everything from your shifting to your suspension damping. Picture the entrance of a Shimano/Fox electronically controlled suspension fork onto the market with a price tag over $1000. How would that be received? How would it be promoted?

Interesting stuff. One thing is certain, though. If I were SRAM’s marketing department these days, I’d be putting a lot of effort into grassroots racing support and features the average rider can clearly appreciate–and I wouldn’t be pushing the panic button just yet. People still like alternatives. If SRAM can maintain their image as the best alternative, that’s good enough. It’s like the old “outrunning a bear” thing: SRAM doesn’t have to be faster than Shimano/Fox; they just have to be faster than all those delicious little companies who are much slower than they are. What looks like a vicious war between Shimano and SRAM might turn out to be pretty painless for both companies, but completely devastating to everybody else.

Friday’s Bicycle BFFs

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Mar 022012
 

Engineering friends much smarter than I am contacted me about yesterday’s post, wherein I wondered what the hell was going on with Shimano holding patents on the 15QR system found on Fox forks. While I’d known that Shimano designed the QR axle on Fox forks (great, because Shimano makes the best quick-releases), and that Shimano and Fox generally partner any time ergonomics or handlebar-mounted controls and such are involved, what surprised me yesterday–and still makes no sense to me today–is why Shimano seems to be patenting so much suspension technology these days.

The questions I have aren’t technological; they’re about the two businesses. I counted eight suspension patents filed by Shimano between 2009 and 2011, most involving the integration of electronics into damping and spring systems, but some that seem pretty fundamental to damping adjusters. No big deal, right? Maybe Shimano has a deeper partnership with Fox than I’d thought and they’re actually involved in designing sophisticated fork innards for them. Shimano’s a bigger company, and they certainly have a vested interest in supporting a SRAM/Rockshox competitor, so maybe they’re lending a significant amount of mental horsepower to Fox’s suspension development.

Except this is Fox. We’re not talking about Crank Bros. here. All of the engineers at Fox tend to know their stuff, but Bob Fox himself is a genuine sleeves-up engineer who knows more about suspension systems than arguably anyone else in the industry. His name is on a whole lot of patents. All by themselves Fox seems to certainly know what they’re doing (you don’t see Shimano making suspension systems for off-road racing trucks). Sure, Shimano’s filed eight suspension patents since 2009, but I stopped counting at fourteen in the same time period for Fox. They’re smart.

Case in point, this May 2011 filing which–though I could certainly be wrong–seems to suggest some version of ProPedal, or “at least four spring curves,” is on the way for forks.

I get why Shimano has enlisted Fox, but why is Fox relying so much on Shimano? Focusing on damping systems and leaving the “bike interface” parts up to Shimano–and relying on the monster sourcing and manufacturing power of Shimano–makes sense to me, but not the part where Shimano is tinkering with valving and stuff, if that’s what they’re actually doing. They’re certainly doing it with electronics, though. I guess what I’m saying is that I can’t figure out where the line is here. If someone were to tell me Shimano owned Fox, for instance, all of this would make much more sense than it does now.

Bigger-picture-wise, two things are clear: whatever the business partnership between Shimano and Fox is, it’s much bigger than I’d thought, and, maybe more disturbingly, Shimano electronics are almost inevitably headed into your suspension in the future.

Just typing this I shudder at the memory of nine volt battery and little LED on a Pro-flex Smart Shock. Obviously the systems in the patent drawings look a hell of a lot better than that, and maybe they’ll only use it on hybrids and stuff, though that seems like a hell of a lot of technology for a user who travels to bike paths with his bike bungied upside down on top of the family sedan. Unlike previous attempts, these systems would probably even work correctly more than half the time, but still, this rough drawing of the proposed little gearboxes that’ll be fumbling with our future dampers is a little disconcerting.

Shimano Electric Fork

At least the added space necessary for the drive motors and stuff will force pretty much everyone to increase fork rake.

Eventually, though, I do see us running out of places to put batteries on our bikes. Hopefully the economy will have fully recovered for most of us by then, so we can pay some riffraff rigid single-speeders to ride along with us, carrying all our extra batteries and maybe an extra water bottle or two.

Shimano vs. Fox?

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Mar 012012
 

Shimano Suspension Fork Through-axle System

Somewhere around my eighth cup of coffee this morning, I noticed Guitar Ted’s extremely interesting post, “Is Someone Waking the Sleeping Giant?”. The question he asks–is Shimano once again preparing to reassert its industry dominance?–is particularly intriguing, given the shape of today’s industry. Those of us who’ve been around long enough to remember Shimano’s last burst of innovative aggression in the ’90s know that the attack came with a violence and sense of scale normally reserved for military invasions. Suddenly, everything changed. When the market share needle at Shimano HQ finally dipped into the “unacceptable” range, quietly–with few flashing lights or screaming alarms–they struck. And when they did, your chi-chi wonderbike circa 1994, with its rasta anodized boutique mess of titanium chainrings and CNC machined everything, was basically vaporized where it stood, its fancy parts rendered quaint and technologically barren nearly overnight.

It was sort of breathtaking.

By the time they dropped those original “V-brakes” on us (with what turned out to be sort of piss-poor little wiggly, fast-wearing mini linkages), it was clear the Shimano tank had driven into our little DIY knife fight, and guys like Kooka and Grafton were going back to their day jobs.

This wasn’t necessarily a good thing. There’s a reason I referred to Shimano as “it” up there at the beginning of the post, whereas you tended to refer to companies like Cook Bros. and Paul Components as “they,” or even “he.” In a way I don’t think Shimano ever really understood that we liked our cobbled together, poorly shifting, fairly domestically-sourced mash-up bikes. A fair criticism of Shimano (that SRAM has done a great job avoiding) is that they’re out of touch with what we really like. But boy is Shimano good at giving us parts we need.

Classic Salsa Mountain Bike

This is what mountain bikes looked like before "system integration."

When shit works–I mean works, like on a level never before witnessed or even imagined–and consistently, you can’t help but start to like it. Sometimes a big company has inferior products but a superior marketing budget or established power and rams garbage down our throats. Realistically, Shimano could have done that. They could have chosen to outspend these little guys–for whom the OE market wasn’t even a factor–and crushed them the standard issue, soul-less business way. To their infinite credit, Shimano actually innovated to the top. They built drastically better stuff. That’s an honorable way to win.

Which brings us to our current situation.

The catalyst for Guitar Ted’s ponderings would seem to be an article in Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, which I’ve clipped for your reading pleasure here. “Are you ready for an 11-speed internal-gear road bike with electric shifting and diss [sic] brakes?” the article begins. Diss brakes aside, the nature of the upcoming components described in the article does suggest the big wheels at Shimano are once again turning, and the giant cannon is once again emerging from Shimano’s base of operations within a hollowed out mountain somewhere. But where to aim it?

Gone are the scattered DIY insurgents Shimano obliterated last time. In their place stands the obvious competitor, SRAM. Though dwarfed by Shimano in terms of revenue, and seriously lacking a “fishing equipment” division, SRAM has seemed almost incapable of making a bad business decision over the past decade, carefully acquiring brands and rolling them up into a very legitimate powerhouse of a company. SRAM did a lot of the same things Shimano had done in the past, but also added a healthy dose of teenage instant-gratification. When Shimano was still saying, “No carbon fiber and go to bed by 10:00pm,” SRAM was busy giving us as much carbon shit as we could afford and letting us stay up all night if we wanted. Formidable stuff. Most notably SRAM took what had been a disadvantage–less ownership and control of their own supply chain and actual manufacturing processes–and turned it to their advantage. They seem to iterate like lightning, making Shimano, no slouch, seem ponderous by comparison. When it comes to mountain bikes in particular, SRAM absolutely out-innovated Shimano over the past five to ten years, thanks largely to listening to riders and being able to develop and bring to market products much more quickly.

But those with an ownership of their supply chain and manufacturing processes are starting to dominate again across all sectors. Apple, the kings of proprietary products and supply chain control, is a company now valued at nearly a half a trillion dollars. With a serious manufacturing advantage, Shimano is uniquely positioned to disrupt the industry yet again, but the real question is will they once again out-innovate everyone?

The biggest question for me–and something at the heart of all of this–is what about Fox? Check the Shimano patent drawing at the top of the post. Since 2009 alone, Shimano has applied for over a half dozen patents just in suspension systems–and these aren’t your Sunday-driver patents. They deal with electronic suspension monitoring and, more telling still, stuff like through-axles.

I included the drawing above because it raises the most interesting question of all: is Shimano about to turn on Fox? They’ve collaborated in the past, and Fox would certainly be a prime acquisition for Shimano, but Fox is no half-ass operation. They have interests and assets outside of the bicycle industry and a long history of independence. As the mountain bike world increasingly breaks down into game of SRAM vs. Shimano+Fox, you have to wonder what the through-axle patents Shimano is displaying say about their current relationship with Fox.

For one thing, that patent drawing looks a hell of a lot like a Fox 15QR system, but some of the embodiments (Shimano offers several within this patent) are even more like the Fox system. I’ll leave you today with those images, and you can ask yourself if we’re about to see a major partnership, or if Shimano’s about to eat Fox’s lunch. If they can.

Interbike Favorites: Fox D.O.S.S. & Engineering

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Sep 272011
 

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Yes, it’s taken them too long to produce one, and yes, the remote lever looks like it was stolen from a hydroelectric dam’s control panel, but Fox’s D.O.S.S. is one of the brightest signs I saw at Interbike.

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Why? Because it signals actual growth and development. Sure, a lot of us remember the original design, but dropper posts are A New Thing, and if you’ve read most of my rants heretofore, you know I’m rooting for innovation. Any time an entirely new category of products hits the market, and established brands begin to support the category by making products, it’s a good thing.

Maybe I’m hyper-sensitive to this right now because my country keeps being declared a has-been when it comes to innovation, and I’m old and cranky enough to remember when we did actually make some pretty cool stuff for these newfangled bicycle with gears and big, fat tires. And yes, I know the Oregon Manifest is going on as I type, and that some of the most beautiful bikes in the world will be on display in Sacramento this March. Yes, beautiful things are still crafted in the U.S. But that’s not the same as engineering. Confused about the difference? Let me help.

1. Built in the U.S.A.
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2. Engineered in the U.S.A.
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Sure, the Escort probably gets better gas mileage, even with the leaking tank, but I can promise you a lot of thought went into that second one, which seems to be a variation of the new Oshkosh M-ATV military vehicle. They were doing brake tests on it on my mountain when I was driving one of the kids home from school the other day. Apparently, it has no defense against idiots passing it and snapping photos.

So, while there are a lot of artisans around, when it comes to U.S. engineering in the bike industry, there doesn’t seem to be much going on, with the exception of precious few guys like Lance and Chris Canfield . While it’d be nice to see more manufacturing going on here in the States, Fox having to play catch-up means at least some product development is still breathing, and that involves smart people in the United States of America who know complicated stuff like math. Regardless of where their stuff is actually made, I know that Fox has U.S. engineers–real, genuine human being ones–that actually live in the United States. I know this because I’ve seen them.

Unlike the case in so many industries, there is still a spark of bicycle engineering left in my country, and every time a brand enters a new category, it means people who ride bikes thinking about how to make them better. When I see that putting food on the table for somebody who knows how to use stuff like PTC, Solidworks, or AutoCAD, it makes me happy.

Best Gizmo Award

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Sep 152011
 

Fox plans to offer a smartphone app and this $100 or so pump that will let you (or preferably your shop) dial in your suspension remotely. Tend to still prefer to set that up myself, but I’m old.

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Interbike 2015: a Preview

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Sep 092011
 

Interbike 2011 is about to get underway, and I’ll be there asking questions like “When will we actually see these at dealers?” and “How drunk were you when you designed this?” What with Eurobike just ending and Interbike just beginning, we’re all focused on seeing the latest stuff.

With that in mind, here’s a preview of some products we might be seeing–not at this year’s Interbike, but a few years from now. Think of this as the bike version of seeing the new Nike McFly. Some of what you’re about to see may never come to be, but some will, and all of it’s interesting. Finding this information is possible thanks to my extraordinary powers of prognostication, but also thanks to publicly available patent information anyone can access any time.

Integrated Shifting and Suspension Systems

I don’t know if Specialized will ever produce products using this patent, but they’ve had these plans to integrate shifting and suspension since 2006. As a guy who still dislikes anti-lock brakes, I tend to hope this stays on the shelf, but who knows. Maybe they could do something incredible with this.


Vibration Damping System for a Seatpost

There are plenty of weird things out there in Patent Land that aren’t yet attached to a company with the resources to see them into production, and this could be one of those, but I get the feeling we’ll see this actually hit the market at some point.


Trek Suspension Fork

Difficult to say exactly why Trek would have filed a patent application for a suspension fork in February of 2010. If it’s an attempt to make inexpensive forks for entry level bikes, you’d still think they’d just license something–and they sure wouldn’t put Jose Gonzalez and Greg Buhl, the guys behind anything serious going on with suspension designs at Trek, behind this project.


Trek’s Concentric Rear Derailleur

No, I don’t think Trek is muscling in on Shimano and SRAM’s turf, but this suggests the boys in Wisconsin are dedicated to their Active Braking Pivot frame design.


Craig Calfee Suspension Frame Design

Though it sure seems to pay homage to the classic Moots circa Kent Eriksen YBB design, Calfee’s design for a soft-tail looks distinct, cleanly done, and really intriguing, and it’s certainly possible we’ll see bikes using this design soon.


Shimano Suspension Fork

It’s certainly possible this fork will never see the light or day, or worse–that it’s intended for a hybrid. Shimano already shows fork patents that seem suited to light duty use, but this thing looks a little sophisticated for a trip to the grocery store. In addition to this patent, the same drawings appear in a second patent that details a process for transferring air between two different chambers using a lever, which gets really interesting, once you’ve seen the third patent, filed in April of 2008, that seems to show a dual remote system for managing both travel and damping (Fig. 2 below), or their external reservoir electronically controlled fork damping system.


Bizarre Dual Shock Suspension Design

Okay, so we probably won’t ever see this thing, and maybe it’s for the better, but part of me sure hopes it surfaces somewhere, somehow. Probably won’t be at a show, though. Interbike has become so incredibly expensive for the exhibitors these days that you never see insane, goofy shit like this anymore, and that’s truly sad. Here’s to you, dual-shock, elevated combo-chainstay-linkage design.


My Own Suspension Design

Maybe you’ll see it one day. I’m working on having a prototype built now. Feel free to submit questions about it using the question submission thing up at the top of the page, there on the right.


Electronically Cooled Fox Suspension

An excerpt from this patent application, filed in 2009, suggests the use of a “thermoelectric generator” that would use a magnet passing coiling wires during movement of the shock to activate a cooling device. Another, even wilder, possible embodiment introduces something called “piezo electric crystals” that would generate electricity when under compression. In all cases, these “TEGs” or thermoelectric generators, have the ability to literally move heat around, and that alone is pretty insane. By the time the application starts suggesting the TEGs can “based on the Peltier Effect and correspondingly constructed from thin ceramic wafers having alternate P and N doped bismuth telluride sandwiched between them,” I’m willing to just give Fox the benefit of the doubt and believe this crazy bastards are really serious about making suspension systems. I mean holy shit, guys.


The examples go on, and now that you know where to look, please feel free to roam around all up in the patent club. I haven’t even mentioned some really interesting suspension designs. Good, bad, or ugly, these patents are all proof that we belong to an incredibly creative and innovative industry.